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707 SCOTT STREET
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SUN fd MOON PRESS

LOS ANGELES
rggb
 Sun &Moon Press
A Progrm ofThe Contemporary Arts Educational Project, Inc.
a nonprofit corporation
6oz5 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles, California 9oo35

This bookws 6rst published by Sun &Moon Press in 1996

tog876543zr
rrnsr eolrroN 1996
@1995 byJohn Wieners
'HmThis Book Cme to Be Two Short Historic' HowThis Book Came to Be:
@ :995 by Lewis Wush and Fanny Howe
Some of this work pmiously appearc d in o-bEk and the Emct Changc Yearbook tg96
Two Short Histories
Biographical material @1996 by Sun &Moon Press
All rights reserved

This bookws made possiblc, in part, through a metching 7oZ Scott Street, thejournal of John Wieners, dates from
grant from the National Endowment for the Arts
1958-59, the years when Wieners 'uras comp osing The Ho-
NATIONAL tel Wentley Poems, as well as many of the great lyrical po-
ENDOWMENT ems included inhis Selected Poems (Black Sparrow, 1986).
FoR!rTHE The journal contains versions of some of these poems as
ARTS well as others that have never been published anywhere. "I
and through contributions to
must forget how to rvriter" he states on the opening page.
The Contmporary Arts Educational Prcject, Inc., "I must unlearn what has been taught me." And then later,
a nonprofit corporation
a bit less portentously: "I must learn how not to write. I
Cover: Louis Faurcr, Untitled, ct. rg48 must \^/atch with my 5 senses." \Mieners 'was twenty-four,
Design: Katie Messbom
still grasping for the ineffable "other" thatwould somehow
Tlpography: Guy Bennett
connect his various selves and give his life meaning, yet he
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA was already fully formed (in many ways) as a poet. The
Wieners,John ft9341
Tlte Jotnal ofJohn Wieners / is to be mlled / 7o7 Scott Stree t question'was how to define the "otherr" how to get there
p. cm (Sun &Moon Classics: ro6) through invocation, so(, poetry, drugs and magic. He knows
-
tstN: t-5577r3-z5z-6
r. Tide. rr. Serie. rrr. Transletor
he has his "whole life" ahead of him, but what does that
8rr'.54tczo matter? Conversations transcribed on the spot (easy to pic-
Printed in the Unitcd States ofAmerica on acid-free paper.
ture poet in corner of crowded room 'rvith journal open),
dream narratives, a list ofpotential contributors to a new
Without limiting thc rights under copyright resered here, issue of his magazine Measure, quotes from reading
no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into
a retriaal rystem, or transmitted, in any fom or by any means
(Wittgenstein, Jung): eyerything's permitted, nothing's
(electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otheruise),
without the prior witten permission of both the copyight mer
and the above publisher ofthe boolc
excluded, poetry and prose passages alternate, while the
emotional pitch centers around loss of love, frustration,
love's inaccessibility, the transience of every encounter.
There's a lot of ovedy self-conscious romanticism, always
redeemed byWieners'innate ability to step back from and
enter into o<perience simultaneously, as if it were possible
to be totally hot and cold at the same time. The journal
conveys the sweep of a whole life lived in this way.
ln t972, William Corbett and I visited John in his apart-
ment at 44|oy Street in Boston with the hope of getting
poems from him for our new magazine (edited with Lee
manuscript pages, a book. On the inside cover of the led-
ger there was the title: 7o7 Scott Street, for Billie Holliday.
I published a few pages of the journal in an issue of Tbe
World,the literary magairne of the Poetry Project ( an is-
sue devoted to autobiographicalwritingwhich I was guest*
editing); then, for almost twenty years, the transcript of
thejournal disappeared. It was the interest ofthe poet Peter
Gizz|who had heard that such a journal oristed, that made
me go searching for it. I never presented John with a
finished copy of the transcript, though I do remember vis-
iting him again and returning the original, not that itwould
have mattered (or so he led me to believe) whether I'd kept
it or not.
_LEWIS .lMARSH

Harwood), Tlte Boston Eagle.I rememberJohn opening a Aprilr99z

trunk filled with ledger-sized journals with old-fashioned
marble covers. "I'd love to read them someday," I said,
thinking out loud, but Wieners caught the genuine inter-
est in my tone and presented one to me. I was initially
shocked that he would simply hand over one of his inti-
mate journals to someone he didnt knowwell (casually, as
ifhe were offering me a taste from a box ofbonbons), and
without even looking through it, but I accepted the ges-
ture as an act of trust, a gift, an offering. Sometimes giving
and taking and accepting is frightening but this moment
seemed perfecdyclear and untfueatening. My next memory
is sitting at a desk on the top foor ofBill's house in down-
town Boston; it's the Watergate summer, Bill and his fam-
ily are in Vermont, and I m listening to the hearings on
the radio and transcribing John's words on my portable
Smith-Corona electric. When I was finished I had 77

5
ln ry72 Bill Corbett and Lewis Warsh visitedJohn Wieners
at 44Joy Street in Boston where he still lives.John pressed
this manuscript, handwritten, on Lewis who proceeded to
type it up at Bill's house at 9 Columbus Square in the South
End. It was summer. The manuscript, c aLled 7o7 Scott Street,
was written between 1958 and 1959, and includes references
to Boston ("colored paper rose, blue spots, ink spots Bos-
tor.,tg4g, the sound of cellophane") although it was com-
posed in San Francisco.lnrygz the typed manuscript re-
surfaced and attracted the attention of Peter Giz.zi,apoet
now about the age that Bill and Lewis were when they
visitedJohn inry7z.
During the summer of r99z,I arranged to meetJohn
outside the branch of the Boston Public Library nearest
Joy Street, because I had dedicated my most recent collec-
tion of poems to him, and I hadnt actually spoken to him
for several years. My oldest daughter, also a poet, was with
me. John was wearing a coat though it was very hot, and
despite the torn orpression of his face, he looked almost
robust. Always courteous, his way of paying attention to
us was to whid our remadc into spirals of poetic speech.
Struck, for instance, by *y sayrng that my daughter was
on her way to London, he "remembered" a girl standing
on the Salt and Pepper Bridge over the Charles Riverl she
was, he said, "stuck with her back to the Hyatt Regency
and couldntgo to London untilThe Highwaywas built."
He also said to her that his mother had told him to get
a job, but he had refused, because a job would prevent him
from writing poems. And then he added two very precise
remarks as if to reassure me: "I look around-and there
used tobe arostrum-in Bostonnoets in the limeligh-
but I dont see them anymore." And again to me, quite THE JOURNAL OF JOHN WIENERS
specifically: "For you and me it's better to be unknown-
to do our work" 707 SCOTT STREET
In 7o7 Scott Street he writes, "and ifl cannot speak in
poetry it is because poetry is reality to me, and not the
poetry we read, but find revealed in the estates of being
around us."John's poetryhas always been the closest thing
possible to a new form ofspeech, one that narrows the gap
between longing and calling. These pages from the fifties
live in that "estate" as much as his spoken words to others
do now.
Estates of being o<ist as streets, seasons, people, songr
and while the placement of his poetics could be cordoned
offby a pcriod in "the limbo of contemporary Americd
that has passed-a poetics that predates post-modern
rhetoric and the strange fixation with an Otherness that
he would not recognizrhis unembittered position as an
uunknown"
witness of the dispossessed is absolutely present
across time'
_FANNY HOWE
Saturday, March 8, 1958
r:3o PM

The sun shines. Miss Kids is across asleep on the couch.

She wakes and says "I dreamt I just put on..." I cant hear
the rest. She goes back to sleep. Dana is asleep in the
bedroom beside this one where the sun fills three windows.
Miss Kids' dark glasses sound/crack on the foor.

I must forget how to write. I must unlearn what has

been taught me.

Last night I dreamed Alan appeared in a hallwaywhere

I leaned against a lintel; there were open doors on all sides
and he presented me with a doll, his doll, the country onc
whose dress he ironed 3ooo miles awzy.He was smiling, a
great smile and I still see his white teeth and the black
beard on his face. She was dressed in black, the doll, and
her long thick hair was tied back the way I had left it. He
had put it on top of one of those innumerable chests he had
around his house. And I take it as a sign that all is well,
I am and he is, today with the doll handed between us, he
wanted me to have what he named was his. It is only Miss
Kids and Dana who have hangovers. I must not let them
hang me up.

13
 She awakes again and asks "Is it cloudy outside yet?"
I say "No" and an automobile horn busts our ears and the
Chinese kids overhead beat and stomp on the foor.
These days shall be my poems, these words what I leave
behind as mine, my record up against time. It is all very sad
that we have to fight it. Possibly I may come to love time
and its taking of my days.
"It well may be,I do not think I would."
Right now, it is very fine. The cable car track shuttles in
right inside the street and they empty the mail-box. A
motor-scooter or motorcycle guns its motor and what
bright flesh runs on Leavenworth Street. The 8o bus stops.
Miss Kids has the Mohawk blanket that we (Dana and I)
bought in the Morgan Memorial up to her eyes and her
hair, her yellow hair is all over the pillow and her shut eye-
lids. The cable car conductor rings the bell twice. It also
stops. Only man and time move. And the space we are
given to inhabit, so fast it is thru our fingers.
I must learn how not to write. I must watch with my
senses.
"the 5 perfections that are the 5 hindrances" and I must
nail down thosc who would, all that would hang me up.
The 8o bus going the other way, to Market Street,
sounds its squashed beep, peculiar to San Francisco, where
they are afraid any loud noise would start another earth-
quake. And yet we all go around screaming.
r4
There is not enough sound in the air. Miss Kids and
Dana have headaches from last night.
I must stop being wise. Miss Kids wakes and says
"Is it latel"
oAlmost
two."
uAnother
day ruined." She stretches her long wa:( arms
(parafin) on the mohair couch. "I feel fine now, Kids."The
sun puts gold on her nose. "Kids, theyte after me." I tell
her "Kids, you look like a fucked Alice-in-Wonderland.
And your hands are swollen,"
She looks at them. "Dana did it,"
Sunday March 9
8eu
I make this veryvery short otherwise it would last
forever. I have walked all dawn, all night. Without control.
5
I am forced to stop what I am doing if I want to survive.
I came home and there is a strange man-boy in the bed.
Dana must have brought him home although he has never
befor-and where is Dana. Whatever, I am tired and my
arm aches too much to write. Detectives again tonight but
why and later I shall tell what they look like.
He does not snore.
15
3:r5 PM
Does anyone knowwho
the person was who got stabbed at Big Eric's Place? Irene
Taverner said in the room and others Present areJoanne
Kyger, Tom Field, James Kity, Mrs. Nemi Frost-Hansen,
Jack Spicer, Robert Duncan, Joe Dunn, Mrs. Carolyn
Dunn, George Stanley andTommy Albright and-
oh yes-Ebbe Borregaard is sitting between Nemi Frost-
Hansen and Jack Spicer. Dana is having breakfast out in
the kitchen and we are all here for poetry that no one is
reading.
"Oh for the days of Marie Laurencirl'
zt41 PM Sunday March r7
It is poetry day again. I have just finished toast and coffee.
Miss Kids arrived at noon and we went uP California
Avenue picking church daisies and ivy which now stick out
of a water-filled glass at my left hand. There are purple blue
and fowers. And miniature bell blossoms that Miss Kids
does not know the name of. I am worn down today. Ebbe
Borregaard and George Stanley. "This is the last meeting."
Also on the left is Michael McClure. Across from me is
Joanne. And beside her is John Ryan. We all sit around
chatting amiably. George Stanley's hands tremble holding
the wine. At my feet is a bronze planter I transplanted
marigolds and ivy into. They are thriving.
Jack Spicer has arrived.
16
5.9-59
What do I need the street for? Ray Charles on piano.
One half of one room is where I live. Love? Fills the
window with light every morning. But I do not see it.
Today I do. Last night I saw Greta Garbo one instant.
All I am interested in is charting the progress of my soul.
And therefore all men's souls. What the soul is I dont
know. But that it is contained in every blood nerve and
brain cell I do. And what its name is I do not. yHvH.
And when man rides with demon on horseback it is only
his own soul. Or sees Greta Garbo on Fifth Avenue. All
actions we thrust on others whether out of enry or disgust
are only operations of our own psyche working.
And we contain the souls of our ancestors.
That the soul is transmitted to us at birth. And that it is
this chart that we follow for life, is our life, what deter-
mines what we will be and are. And I am interested only in
unraveling this, showing the snags and syndromes, so that
other men may have some ease in doing theirs.
Or at least
Work out thy salvation with diligence.
Tonight they're dancing
the dance ofdeath
all over America
ballerinas in their
little spike shoes
17
 and boys with painted eyes Godi Curse
Hold tltat tiger
have blackjacks for hands. Man when it is night, look for the light
How can we pass there. And when it turns bright, mourn the moon's fight.

We all know how death travels these days.

On horseback
5.ro.5g
Shou, me his face.
Look in the mirror. Man when it is night, look for the light
I want to hear his breath and when it be bright, mourn the moon's fight.
in my ear.
Hold it to the ground. The human voice is blue.
Watch his waves rush in on thc shore.
You think you have seen it all. Fast as I can write it down I will
I'11 show you morc. The list of the living gone'over to the
In the faces oflittle girls.
Who carries flowers not thru the fields. Gone PorterTuck, Shela Pl"rr, gorr.lt"d'
How can I see him with dl these faces Rita and Rubio, gone gone gone
gathered here.
From my life and the pictures in my heart Right out of their heads
he gathers. their hearts stop beating.
Mark thcm down. I say nothing new about death
Chalk them up. except that the living enter it for
a new life.
All I am interested in is charting the progress of my own
soul. And my poetics consist of marking dourn how each And the living sigh thru the rooms,
action unrolls. drug addicts,
Without my will. It moves. So that each man has his own locked in single fats, find one of them,
poetic. fixing for paradise.
Qballah.

r8 t9
 I too. who cares
Mark me down. for the details, only the dance
A Marksman, making makes it
time for death. this desire.
What am I in all this space, man says.
I, a speck of dust in time. Who will light
my night? The fault of the "poerri' here is

And time always night where we are. that I lose sight of the original emotion, & the original
object bilk of home. Rather I go offand write a poem
tbe
about an old lover. Which landscape contains no real
TheWoman rn me objects nor actions but all heightened, glamourized, even,
at the end, abstracted.
It is a simple song: So what starts offas potentially simple lyric with possibly
to long, for home and Dana a
lounging there under the moon. new
Who is Dana, what is he form
that he should mean so much to me? winds up as a trashy romantic unreal self exploration.
Nothing is sacred, but to sacrifice a real event even if out of
Is it love, or grass stains the past for theatrical effect, afFect, is second rate and trashy.
on your shirt? Also the poem on previous page rhapsodizes rather than
Is it night, or the sight of flesh match my emotional
lying on its side in the Pine Grove language
line
Groove of memory overgrown with imdge
weed & speedballs. the weight of death. There is no sense of a breakthrough
Is it movie houses, or blowjobs in the kitchen into a new place as there is a hint ofit in this essay. So all
Is it hate or blood or the serves well.
food of seed running down yr. leg
Basements, ballrooms, back alleys,
black masquerade, who can say
 The Man Cover over the rooo nights
to this place: rourla
It is so simple. Not
I mean to say wasting life KnightTernplar of the Holy Grail,
over love. holy oil on my head.
I light candles. I follow &I sack the place.
phantoms down the street. They are Do up the altar, black mechanics.
never her. The flashing of silver spikes
Here I am in the night. The strapping
Who will ofbelts and cooking ofevil fires.
have me, in my bones, and crooked Spoons and eyedroppers,
joint. Who will crawl slapping of flesh, sucking of blood,
under the covers and join hitting vcins with
head to head, secret plot, the dirty needles.
sacred spot. What a way to start the day.
So that there will be no face After this long journey.
before yours in the mirror. To stop here
and knovr I go no more.
Who is she and what is she
to me that I should hunger silendy There is no god
at the moon, thin cunt in the sky powerful enough to end this
apple of my eye, that god be deadend, this
delivered in the dawn, surrender place of pure rapture.
his daughter to this crippled son.

Oh country of hunchbacls,I June rr

walk with my shoulders
to the wall. Green lead in my pencil. Think of the hundred hotels
with nothing in them
but a radio and opium pipes

23
Listen to a Chinese voice II
sing in the night and
Read Confucius. Later Miss Lollipop sits up in bed all night, playing and
write in a green pencil smoking pot. She lights candles and
what you learned listens to
today. jazz

a NewYork hippy
I she says what is it now
about the shadow
abook of poems for Miss Lollipop ofToledo on the wall, an oyster, a blue heron,
I want it to be the bookJohnlvrote in his prison cell in tell me what it is now
Toledo. ForToledo and yet entombed in the burning wall the late, late show
of his soul. Surounded by the plant and fowers of the the man on the radio
valley, blown in the night by ocean wind, behind glass, with says It aint nece'ssarily so
sweet incense drifting under the doors, and yet locked out,
in of it all. Beautiful women pass before him, putting on What do you now,litde
lipstick, their swains zipper their coats. Foreign voices ride Miss Cheracol, what do you do
in on the radio, pluck invisible guitars and leave the, let sun when the horse runs out, who do you
fash in his eyes for an instant. go to
to get it and how far to
She combs her hair with a pink comb make it yeah
by the edge of this bed. Her legs just one more time.
$May to the Mexican whistles, she In the night with Miss Lollipop
stands on one leg. strapped up, down
Do not stop to the last vein in her leg.
6xing your red hair Oh year, walk now,
Sheri step to vrhat
of the night. The trumpets blare sweet song and
your exit. happyboy. Bobby Short

24 25
 June 14 Rejection of all other than the Real Substance is a deity.
Therefore, do not adulterate truth with falsehood.
III The "where" and the "how" are open mysteries:
Dispense, therefore, with them both.
Miss Lollipop is not here. She has SUFI
gorre away, is home,
is not my muse, is me sitting here swaying He who accepts among men His uttered word shall receive
to Red Fred's piano. She permission to speak among men.
woke up feeling ill SUFI
this morning. And remains hidden
from me all day. See to it that you do not deny that which you cannot
understand of the secrets.

June 16 Occupy yourself with the divine revelations and forget

Like water let your taste be both fresh and cool
On the tortured belly of every friend.
SUFI MAXIM
The spirit is a delicate organism composed of radiant
substances:
Ifyou were a heavenly chair, or a throne, or a garden
Or fire or heavenly bodies running their course,
And if of the Whole you were a coPy
And knew this to be a realiry
Why then should you abide in your debasement,
With those who are prisoners? Is not your turn come
that you
should go home?
S UFI
material assistance.
But for the tears and suffering oflovers,
Need for water and fire among men would have been greatl
All fire takes its spark from their sighs,
A1l water f.ows from their tears.
It is customary in classical Arabic poetry of love
to refer to the object of a man's passion in the masculine.
Willthe fames of love ever be quenched? Where and
when shall union with the beloved take place?
Contemplation: The man of gnosis was drowned and thus
became unconscious of o<istence; he was annihilated
through the object of contemplation away from contempla-
tion itself

z6 27
Contemplation: As the gnostic rejoiced in the blessings of
mystic knowledge, his sleevecuffs yielded perfume which
spread throughout the world.
I hid myself fromTime behind his wing
So that my eye sees Time while he sees me not.
Ask the days of me, they know me not;
Of mywhereabouts they know not either.
Manifestation (zuhur) comes to men by acceptance and
perfection.
Thoughts are the stars of mind's heaven.
The removal ofjudgement takes place through enlight-
enment and resumption of belief in predestination (tagdir)
When Providence comes, it causes judgement to vanish
immediately.
Nature is the house where lies the time of the echo;
what ever you say in it, it will resound to you; it is a mirror
revealing what is in you.
For you might consider the mountains on which you
look stationary whereas they travel with the speed of the
clouds.
SUFI
zB
from the Maxims ofllluminations
The reality of love is 6re which consumes the livers, an
agony that swells and increases.
If ever they disclose the secret, they pay for it with their
lives.
Such is the punishment of those who divulge.
Sketch: The greatest love is one that settles in the heart
immediately and distorts all onet feeling without giving
notice.
Tiue love is an obligatory magnetic force.
Conjuration of the treasured talisman (fath tilsan al-Kazaz)
Take the letters of the human talisman (al-tilsam al-insana)
and extract from them the spiritual name (al-ism al-
ruhami), then
affix to it your signature and carry it as an amulet while you
go on your path.
John Wieners al-ism al-ruthami
Decipherment: The saint who is beloved of Allah is the
treasury of secrets and mysteries; the Night of Power,
magnificent in consequences; the Name that is heart by
Allah; the Letter of Action.
29
Decipherment Ponder the letters of the alphabet. ..
And recite:
Outside of your essence, I have no ambition,
Not a picture to capture, not a glance to gleam.
I found my mark ' . ' My sign.
My sig
nature. It is on my arm.
Mainline. It is the four
pointed star. The sleepwalker's eye
that never closes, points
to the four corners of the universe. Not square
Lasdy, you may say that annihilation is complete consecra-
tion to the light of manifestation.
S UFI
And my roommate carries offmy sins, I send him
down the primrose path, stick him
fulIof needles, knowing that every day
carries him closer to oblivion, his
I do not try to help him, I let him
die before mybody a,ery day
I have the blues and they are lifted from me
to land on the back of
little boy blue
across the room. Oh their shoulders
3o
Regulation: The saint is one who smiles if saluted; in
conversation he is pleasant;when asked he shall give;
should you trespass in his presence, he utters not a malig-
nity; when others divulge secrets, he concealsl of princes he
knows he is not proud, and the poor he does not disdain;
nothing shall mar the radiance of his face; the nort world
he does not sell for the present.
But compas-
sing all points
North
East-West House of the planets
South
Pole, Arctic rndZenith,up and
down the stairs, the ladders
Talisman: Usually conjuration does not occur without a
key; the key is the great man; therefore, when the fruits of
humanity are obtained, the talisman of the universe shall be
conjured and shall yield the realities, the miror-treasure.
Talisman: Said the Messenger of Allah, Allah bless and
keep him, Allah, the Exalted, says: i4, seryant continues to
draw near unto me through his supererogatoryworks till I
love him, and once I have loved him I become to him a
hearing, an eyesight, a hand and a support."
3t
 June 18 thought how pretty) she was carrying z ampules of methe-
drine, the new miracle drug and one joint of marijuana
v which she stashed in the back seat of the police car. She
cannot lay down to sleep because of the pain (Richard calls
Miss Lollipop is full of pain this morning. Her wing bone her blue all over)
in the back. Her legs are black and blue. She ran her hands "She's sick,"
over me showing me where the pain is. We sat up all night "She is sick."
listening to jazz and then at dawn, rock and roll. Her but cannot go to hospital because
history as far as I know it consists of ofclaustrophobia and feels she needs a rest first and to
8 arrests, "get the rent all cool, I guess."
4 husbands. Her father was chief of the narcotics bureau in
Sacramento. She lives in the Broadway Hotel with an
Armenian piano player. She bends her neck as one of her A poem In the Car with Freude
boys rubs his hands into her. She wears a black bra. She
does not complain. Let this be the poem
of v, written on that page in the green book.
Miss Lollipop has one of the most rare diseases known to
medical history. A form of low grade bacteria that causes To accept all revelations of
her shape to change every day. One day Pregnant and full of the letter next to last
gas, the nort shapely. As she puts it, "I?e had a lot of one ofthe alphabet,
trouble with my insides." She now laments the loss of her z5rt/t of a century
car, a"totaf'(wreck in the 3 car collision). Actually cries
over it. the language of numbers,
my age.
They're making a new kind of car with glass as the MafiaMurder,
floor mats, she says, so when you run over somebody, you the letter u
can look down and see what you done with them. When My
she was arrested for the hit & run (they claim someone else Me and you, far out
was driving, a young man, who ur, told them was Paul prince ofthe spheres
Martinelli because she could not remember the accident at who reveals to the servant
all only saw the headlights coming out of the night and in the tunnel

32 33
 this secret x &y. Read
A book of poems on Of the Felicity and Sweetness of God's Love:
a piece ofpaper that And of the Nightingale's Song: and Prayer for Perseverance
has no end. O ofTiue Ghostly song that Worldly Lovers have not.
glory. Hosanna.
O radix cordis mei
My mother's name. O my heart's rose
She sits in the heavens
sets them all in motion perfeccio
whirling thru the universe
-"ioy"
discharging at night "Lezveyr."

fash and spike of Piles in tlte West

the golden rod, road
uray.Wxy Dec z3'Pennsylvania Hotel
Washington D.C.
7.r7.59 1959

For the boisterous and fleshly soul is not ravished into
contemplation of the Godhead unless all fleshly lettings be
wasted away by ghostly meditation.
RICHARD ROLLE
The Fire ofLove
Delectable heat is also in the loving heart, that has de-
voured heavy griefin the fire ofburning love.
A poem at the Equinox
Beyond grie{, beyond pain
at the universet unending turning,
we move, still spectres of another race,
our hands to our mouths, sailing
out to some beach beyond oblivion.
Move on
I wrote at Black Mountain, to that higher
order where the angels are, residing in
the heavybreasts of men'
No dice. Move now

34 35
through chambers where there are walls, the Erroll Garner's underwater playing Dreamy!
doors with names, and the names no faces,
trying to pierce After Midnight Ella Fitz
the magic box that sings in the middle Singing A Tisket A Tasket
ofeach forehead
Godhead 20 years ago one
playing with the atomic chains of hair generation, away
around each wrist beloved toys of
linking what is lare my parents, ignored
to all there is by adored
byme
1939
6.2r.59
Hipsters' Corner. The Zenda B allroom. Wally B erman.

June z7
July +
Characters
I thank thee Lord, Le Diable, for sending me these thy
Miss Lollipop gifts: Miss Lollipop home from the hospital on a a4 hour
leave. Her "sister" died for the third time. They gave her 4
Lord Hydrogen seconals to calm her. A lad also is here asleep on the bed.
Lady Helium I feel his warmth at my feet, curled up on the other half of
this cot. Miss Lollipop sits on the other bed which is on
the foor with Richard. On the floor is Jimmy Carter who
June z8 has been here all day eating chicken and ham, smoking por,
reading The Circle of Knoaiedge. Does the night ever endl
Jimmy Dorsey It has to as I have to go with it.My shadow on the wall
Dee Parker vocal: needed in the scheme of things. WithJimmy andJohn
Im GladThere's You Davidson on the foor. Sherri

36 37
Monday (in the jungle Aaron I wanted to say they are attacking me now.
says.
Elise screams I dont have balls. Every time I see you. But
My room. Elise drunk at the end of the bed. I watch like like I dont need them. Cry I know. I wont cry and I wont
a hawk as she staggers from bed to table withJim Beam in shed a tear. Now they are woven in here now. Keith
her hand. She holds it high to the male guests who ignore watches Aaron make it. Richard: that represents the art of:
her. Keith has the needle in his left hand. They are shoot- Aaron. Buffoonery. Elise has the whiskey botde in her hand
ing sleepers. Elise talks of Gertrude Lawrence singing and her head sags on her shoulder. Can I sit on the foot of
When my Ship Comes In and Lotte Lenya of a different your bed. He touches with a cold hand my ankle. There you
ship that comes in to do the whole town in. She fexes her go I remember the first time I missed and it spread like a
muscles. Aaron on the floor: I once knew a mattress great big beautiful sunburst. His arm is raised above I hear
wringer in Dubuque. The radio: Great Western Furniture the needle squirt. He says look give me luck. Help me put
Store. Elise says this is the last time I'm gonna clean up for it in there. It's a tribute he says to what you're working
anybody else. Mopping up the whiskey Aaron spilled on against.
the floor. Keith sits under the light cleaning out the clogged Hit!
spear of the needle, Harry sleeps at the foot of the bed,
with a pink flower dying in his lapel. Richard is in his
sickbed, with a high fever. There is only one light and the Mexico
window is open. Red drapes blow in the wind.
The door bell rings. We are thrown into a mild hysteria. How can I write
Elise again, goes down to !eak." Aaron is snapping his about there
knuckles to the rock and roll. It was somebody for Wally. where I neverbeen. Tell the frog
Elise is swiggrng from the bottle. Keith is wheeling his arm
in the air. Aaron ties him up. Elise rolls over on the foor. to jump out of its garden or the
Hiding her face. Her fists are clenched above her head. garden to grow
Aaron says: you'Il be patient with me, wort't you, there it with god.Tell him
goes. Don't wanna do wrong, dont wanna do right. Keith
has given his 6x to Aaron. You don't mind do you Keith. to lay down his law. Without words
They are fighting. He rings a bell in the closet. Elise is or a place behind them.
looking at me, Aaron wheels his arm in the air. He stands A front
as he does. Now kneels to drink his whiskey. What school for a back.
did you attend, Elise he says as he puts the needle in his Home in Indiana.
arm. My father's love and my mother's womb, Go baby go Massachusetts is the place for me.

38 39
 From ajournal the stars creeping up the hill and thought ofsex in the dark,
July 13 catching him surprised coming around some corner, cradling
his cock in his hands. Hard it was
The long night spent in slack hours. When the hand
is too heavy to lift to the machine. Almost. Rather on me to lay there
slip over into oblivion. The eyes sink with only the ground under me. Bits of it stuck
into the head and the mind to my coat. Let it go
pulled down into I think; Rise up from this waste. There is no lover
a scene of its own, when conscious thot in the dark. No nightmare stallion
stops. But the action of this creation
brings me back, the charge that catapults me to turning into a tree to see
take action, for its own sake, the you; are alone. I rose and went out
cause unknown, of no interest, only the web of the words, by the street bush I came in.
like the days of a life form an image which is a
construct against and of (for nc
time, erected out of space, in the space of this hour,
this night, this drifting with one hand
over our mouths and the other Blaze Starr
to our belly. I speak in plural for that is who
I am possessed by r)
tonight. The discharge. A silvertassel hangs
from the edge ofher tit.
Green leaves grow out of her hands,
King Solomonls Magnetic Quiz she is Daphne in a
diaphanous gown. Earl Long's
And when I went to the woods old lady. See her on
I heard the whispering of lovers the roof of the world. Hands
ages ago. Was it of goodies for the King.
lights or my eyes playr.g tricks on me? The trees were
forms, was rain dropping on the ground like feet,
fog and my own game at hand.
On my back I saw
4t
40
 2) We awake to chaos & desire. It chokes
A silver tassel hangs our throats. Puts tears
from the edge of her tit. in our eyes. Masters of the beat, with-
Green leaves grow out of her hands, roll held from the in6dels. Dope does not replace it. The Men who.
in the afternoon practice it our gods, our families. The mind the
her legs and arms alabaster, final test. It is an
her hands shape secret codes. aristocracy. Envy for the
titled holders of the crown. Problems. Pushed to the
She is Daphne in a limit each time
diaphanous gown. Earl Long's we try it. Try it
old lady. Oh la la and see.
The slim books our heritage. Wise men of the world. And
Bourbon Street. A belly the way our
fi.rll of goodies for the mind works the way
Bayou King. And jelly the poem reveals it
self.
rolls all afternoon. I can count on countless years before me with no food in my
stomach,
writing out history in some dark room, doing my bit towards creating
July r7 rrvr a new structure
from love.
For the poet what else is there but poems. Let the jazz It can only be that. For my other motive we fail. And love is a
organ pump in the afternoon. Let the dope sParse thing
fiends sell their asses in the street and the'discjockeys to nurture all
spin their records, advertise wares, we are the these years.
creators, coiners ofthe new
word, line tempo
time held to a measure. We become
what we create. Call down the entire universe into
one syllable.

42 43
 q Dis-
July
charge. Manifesting the
process of
A Glimpse is it life? Or the action between this and
non-action? Letbargy as.
There is a knot in the middle of my head Violence.

that will never be untied. For to take up arms against the void is attack, and the price ofwar
Two monkeys sit there is high. Millions of syllables
one on the right turned towards me, the shed over the falls of our saliva, millions of teardrops
other crouched and turned roll out of our eyes. Giant screams echo through the halls of
away. They our houses at night. We do not wish it. It is so. By the action
have red hair and do not play we are engaged in. Hundreds of days, months have to go by before
with their chains. But sit on a ledge the spirits descend and the right word rolls out sharp and full of
above Venice? Anyway a city with canals fire air earth and water
painted by Breughel,I see offthe tips of our
them in a mirror when I look for my own face. tongue. And one ch,nnot avoid the days. They have
to parade by in all their carnage. The events of them like
images on a shield, we carry thru the streets of
the town
A poem does not have to be a major thing. Or a statement? later on our way to the poetry reading. Drunk or
I am allowed to ask many things because it has been given doped before that wild horde who presses in
me the means to plunge into the depths and come up with to get a pick at the bloody hero. And is hei
answers? No. Poems, which are You bet.
my salvation alone. The reader can do with them what he likes.
I feel right now even the reading of poems to an unknown
large? public is a shallow arl, unless the reading be given for the July zo
fact of clarity. The different tecbne
a man uses to make his salvation. That is why poetry A poemfor a marriage
even tho it does deal with langue is no more ltoly act
than, say shitting. I sit facing out to sea waiting for the woman
to cook supper and her daughter
beside her chewing on a chicken bone.

44
45
 Flamenco musrc bits ofcolored glass
on the machine, the rv drifts out recovered from the sea.
from the bedroom
where the boy sits in the sun, watching. Green, blue,
Which star on stones,
its fullcircle set on a hill. A bird red paint droppings and rust.
drops by overhead out the open door Hollow indentations
where the stones dropped out.
the sky is very blue. r foot by z feet,

z) The wind blows thru slats on the porch, fishing rods

She sits now in this room, her legs on a table
gold sandals around her ankles. A
Weigh it. Why not. This day is no different
from any other. A neighbor comes calling.
Down Catfish Row, and the
girl says, I
am a worm in the house. They are in
this room. All four of them. The avalanche of
humanity stimulates me. Their lives inbound 4)
with mine. The last light leaves a gold glow
behind the spires of far trees. They bring me
my drugs. I am patronized and supported
by the'uromen of the world. They keep life between them
a bright river.
The sea runs a deeper blue.
3)
I watch night come down. Or we turn into it. A piece of
hang over the sea, it washes
under me. I see it green with white light from the sky
carried on its surface to the shore. Swish against
the pilings of this house.
We are built out
over the sea.
And the sky shall be beneficent to us. Despite its rumble
A train?
so that the women run out and say what is it?
I dont know. Some response to my word. Unsaid in
the cries of flamenco dancers,
heralding the dark. Full moon rising in some unseen
place. But we know it. The woman and
I holding out, onto
the wings ofwhat bird roaring to the east.

driftwood holding down this Page, Phoenix.

plaster ofparis on its face

46 47
 July zr erra
Subjects to write about that interest me:
I. Stars, Les Etoiles.
2. The Spectrum. The Exact and in-
o<act, what Olson told the mathematician tae catbe.
When the door blows open in the middle of the night,
I want to write it down.
I know what stirs the heart of man. I know how
to win him to my side. By letting my beart spring
forth. As the wind.
A poet only writes poems. That is all
he should have to do. Unless he encompasses more and
we do. Universes.
3. A sleeping woman. My fear of them. Not their cunts
but their souls. We do not have to speak
at high pitch. We only have to use
the instant, in whatever form it appears. High tide or
low, below this house
it washes.
The sea. Senses, how they are dulled. Do drugs
because they stimulate when they wear off
leave one down, needing the drug to rise to what next
presents itself Yet it has been over two years
since I began a steady use of them. And I feel my writing
my being fows out and in from the universe with more give
and take, that there is a parabola
in us, hollow places where we foat into the abyss, knowing
the shape of all things around us.
Contour.
48
Feel. Her rosa vulva,
guarded by the fesh of her legs. OhJoanne you let me
know your secrets and I love you for it.
4. The Tarot Deck. I pick one every day and it is the day.
Sets the tone. Unleashes a chain of events
that I love on, off. Capricorn. The land and
sea. The narcotic and natural. Man and all
the generalities. I was going to say Woman
The Womb. That secret Place. She has the
[cobalt
bomb in her womb. Francesa. Madam La
Farge. The Flower Girl with giant nasturtiums
spread out over her giant breasts and thighs.
Cunt that I could smell in the car. Sitting on
her lap. Singing to me: You must have been a
beautiful baby. Joanne with her two beside
her sleeps and laughs in the big bed. Oh house
what enchantment have I wandered into.
The poem progresses of my own life, and pulls
[*"
along with it.When man cannot write in a
IPlace
I do now write myself out
he leaves that place.
but renew myself daily. I am in accord with the
word of my time. What my space is I do not
fknow.
These two continuums are unknown to me.
Not like my flesh. I am learning that. It
is my key into all wisdom, is wisdom as the
49
 man who wrote'AgainstWisdom as Such," says
My master. Who reveals so much to me, and
who acknowledges me, was the first to recognize
and save me from the self condemnation I
[practiced
Let me know the chambers of my soul. Even tho
he would never acknowledge my using
those words. Medieval, he said of the heart.
We have to be post-modern. Or
more.
The Stars. Etoila.
It's enough writing. the night makes me stop.
I do not and dol
practice compulsions.
July zr 3 rivr
On the back deck behind the room which she said is %
witch's casde." Only a choice ofwords. It is a casde, we know
that. lnywbere h eoeryrutbere.The universe orpanding as we
do daily. But why this talk of cosmos. Where will it take usl
To the mountains against our will. We always have to go
against that. To stand erect. Do what we dont want to do,
but know that is where the richness is. In the skies. Enough
of this poetry Remove yourself from them. For it is here at a
distance that we gain sight/insight. That is not the practice
of claritas, nor perspective as they usbd to say. But peace.
Within yourself Moving with the spheres which whirl in
such abundance and I imagine velocity. Setting right the rites.
5o
One can practice the pure poem in Life:wz. monks and nuns,
saints John Kelly and virgins, whores, all who are led by forces
that are not their own. Giving themselves over to the white,
contemplation, making art a religion and the pursuit of the
soul their guide. Dante thru Hell, hungering after Beatrice.
But in the Poem, there has to be the black, the whole process
gone thru, trans
mutation.
Mutate or die Duncan said
over the table eating radioactive lettuce.
The blonde girl comes out on the porch. I say Hi Sweetie.
She smiles down on me like the angel from heaven she is.
She's followed by her brother who says: Hi Mr. Giant. What
joy to see Kelly pull in a polka dot dress the Kangaroo truck
and say: This is our baby. Larry says: It's a lit up trolley car. He
says: Jack, do you want to play with this, you can be ghost." I
say "I'm playrng already."There is no pain in this so I know it
is not a poem. A poem comes from a pitch beyond
man's reach.
That is why impossible for r r u to ever turn all men into robots.
There being at times ro or 50 poets in every rZ5, ooo, ooo men.
Practicing a process which produces pure gold; The poem
which contains enough joy and pain to
illuminate men at times over a time of thousands ofyears.
Pushing on to eternity. Who knows where our words go.
But it is an immortal art of man. Practiced by him alone
in absolute silence in the middle of noisy bars and restaurants,
on the back porches of houses from Gloucester to San
Francisco.
5r
"Make it Neu a vegetable organic renewing as well as psychic." I tell her
my dream, how they
Istole
July zz the bike and I think some clothes because they gave us cigarette
papers to redeem them. Red Sharpe's car and when I got my
She has brought her treasures out into the sun and I spring clothes back they had someone elset name sewn on the label.
to write them down. An old name I will not reveal,
4 stills of Charlie Chaplin, "2by z" walking on the road
then rnr rNo, asldo
spread out in a circle on the contents of table. The black circle drawn around the hole
top of the table,l/z an orange rind, the top in the center, the clinking of pewter as she moves the objects
of a crystal water jar, a sugar tin, drifnvood, green stones around, the wash of the waves under us.
thrushes, my head is still heavy with sleep, the brain cells
not open from the dream.
Of night and the junkies luly zz
stealing my bicycle and books. I love them because they are the
boys of my childhood who would chase me home Late afternoon with the sun at about 7 o'clock in the July
from school and leave this same terror. sky. The moon is on the wane. Tide pulled into shore. How
to survive in the city. A desperate act. To make it there on
So that even here by the sea, one's own terms. And seek sustenance from the street. How
the objects of my life return, from another life that never dies. a man does that is interesting moreso than from the
country. We know his means. Give and take the peculiari-
Fish bones, a pin ties of each place. But the city is a fabled labyrinth, and
sustenance there is subterranean. Life on the surface
She brings me in regiment, ordered mechanized the people move as robots,
another tin displaying neither love nor fear: Sophistication and of
course the infinite variety of individual acts made to break
charcoal burnt newspaper. the stereotype. How can it be done?
At nightwhen
there is only one eye and the police prowl as roaches thru
every layer. Searching like poets every face, gait, manner

52 53
of dress. Under the street lights only the eccentric stands gods. Do not doubt it. Myvery existence to this day depends
out garbed in the costume of his game. Streetwalkers, on their beneficence. Chance. Which treats me kindly.
showgirls, perverts, late business men, clerks, schoolboys, Knock on
tourists, from the healthy country (these really belong here wood. Why the drop in the
in this panorama) poets with pale faces, girls dressed in line because I feel the forces
black beside them. All parade by on silent errands. There is gathering that makes a poem. By mention of them
seldom laughter except in the neighborhood and negro
districts. Here all is flash and glamour. The Best in tbe West rush in of what powers, old ghosts
the signs sing. Cars circle here too, constant for some piece my mother and sister whispering their prayers in
of prey. Cats with no homes but pads. Closets, garages, padded cells.
lofts. These persons hold on and try to erect poles to place
the syndrome. How long? Two years at it and I am worn Echoing thru the blood
out. My teeth half gone at 25. A racking cough all night. of my body, the power of the sun.
Litde fqod and sour stomach in the morning unless drugs, Maximum at this instant
not to deaden one, but open doors for the fantasy world. like the clapping of hands and distant hurahs
Sur-real is the only way to endure the real we find heaped
up in our cities. And across most of the country. Are we to heard on the beaches ofthis land.
survive at all? Attempt is being made by a few to withstand
the heaps. To crawl out on all fours, hands & knees, for There is no consistency in me.
retreat. If only a week. To restore the devastation of I change as the sky,
absolute poverty which America, not our laziness which is blue, aqua
inherent in all and everyman, has to fight against, forces us marine, orange gold and deep
to practice. For every scrap of bread is worked for. Each purple. Radio spires
crumb from the master table of 1959. A prosperity peak. what I erect in this spectrum to detect the changes.
When the man who wants to create on his own level has to A bird's tweet, a piano
resort to crime to do it. Petty or not, it is theft and we are by the sea where green and royal blue
held responsible for it. In the eyes of the law which are meet, not mid way but
waiting to pounce on us. Not many survive to report on it constant-
in even this form. The jails are filled with saints and heads lymix
who believe in Jesus Christ, his acts as a man. And at the mudpies in the slry.
beginning what support can one a(pect o(cept from the Of my eye.

54 55
 Rose
white pale red, black I would rather live my dreams at night than
bogs ofcloud dream them out to 611 the morning with pain.
bunched to begin
the new night.
Over I think but the melody
lingers. I am too
7/zz/59 taken away
by sense/impulses fying me off
It has to do,,wth jaz,z. This dark symphony brought to birth anywhere.
by brothers, to Hell, to junk. There is a reason for the But so it is and here
vocabulary we use. The demon means we use to extend our I go again
life on whatever terms we can make. An infinite extension. taking a chance
Hold on, fond wanderer, when you come to this to whatever On love.
you are involved in, with every atom ofyour body, for this is Its gende barges drift me up
eternity. And cannot be turned away from, at peril of your a hundred new
death. The voice comes out channels. Clanging out a
from the microphone jungle dance
megaphone man makes under the moon
in whatever clearing he can. Sun
zoth century r. burnt on my back. Bearing
her crescent on his breast.
I'll remember April and the way Walking over the land
it turns in the night the town like hands beating out a rhythm Ido not
to snow. understand'
See the streets banked high and the men Listen. It is
midgets between them. Morse code from the goddess,
Howwe walked, under the trees and lights And jingle bells in the
laid down in the ice and made love. ju"gl..
No more. This is a city of the sun.
Nocturnal dreams are out of place, Mambah.
the acts we no longer live return to
haunt us in our dreams.
56 s7
 Jaly zz Picks up speed
the tide does
And so now I sit alone in the house with the lights on and with the rising of the waning/ moon.
Lex Ba,xter beating his drums
on the phonograph.
The woman and the z children asleep on the porch July z3
covered in blankets.
Night I thinkwith wild cries He thought: What next to do? He wanted to stay in
and a cymbal clashes somewhere in the jupgle. the house beside her, her spirit moving thru the
An uptown beat. rooms; the door was open to the porch and the waves were
Tempo. Try to maintain control there. The boy was crying, rather whining in the next room.
of the tempo, dont fy off He would stop. He was bored. He was not stirred by the
like the evening star rising of the waves. They would roar for aeons on this
Venus beach after him. Who would be here to hear them. The boy
from the sea. had been sent outside. He came back in sobbing to the
bathroom, and the gid was sucking a honey dew melon.
How red she is Motor boat roared in the bay. It was July and the dog days.
tonight He thought what's a poet doing writing prose? Where are
Love descends on the land. The record the phantoms he had called down with night. Gone with
ends. With the night. Writing he knew was an agony. From what
no other words but hers source it sprang he did not know. That the gods were not
in the night. Two tin cans with him now he knew. But he felt that the recording of
take over this poem. A skin that fact was important. The cqnng on the doorstep had
stretched over bamboo begun again. And the girl came in calling: Mommy do you
blows out Cuban blues in the night like uant to see a sailboat? | am a silent man, he thought. How
Chicago. East in can I ever amuse a woman? Fill her life with a structure
the city I dont wanna go no more. that would support her and prop her for the life they had
I wanta be left together. The wind is a woman, he thought, but he
free as the breeze knew that was not true. And that this compulsive writing
that blows the waves not a productive act for the house. But the house is a
onto the shore. woman, he thought and so he went outside.

58 59
 He sat in the big green chair overlooking the sea.
He had changed pens from a ball point one to a fountain.
He had taken offhis shirt and there were grapes in his l6ft
hand.
A machine whirred on the porch
next to theirs
and the waves lapped at the pilings behind him. He ate a
grape and spit the seed into the sea, crushing it first by
accident between his teeth. It is terrible, he thought, to be a
reporter of the instant. One has to be there all the time. He
ate another.
There was a hill behind the house, like a gargan-
tuan guardian of the house. Its summit reaching a peak
exactly in front of their front door, which opened onto a
boardwalk which led to a piece of land not wider than 5 feet
which ran between the hill and sea, along that little bay of
houses which she called Cat Fisb Roru. Across the bay was
another hill which she pointed out to him last night looked
like an Egyptian mummy. He said Gulliver. She said what.
He said Rip Van Winkle. And later, reminds me of a
drawing by Blake, you know the old man with the long
white beard. She went inside to 6x the rest of supper and
he had smoked. Later she came and got him in the door-
way. Sending waves of her being thru him as he stood in
the doorway there, holding onto his wrist and causing his
belly to bounce in that queer way, like he too was at high
tide.
Now it was a new day and he sat in the
green chair above the sea with only dungarees on and they
too had a hole in the seat. He finished the grapes and threw
the vine down. Then the last seed between his teeth, his
6o
fingers, he shot it out and it bounced back offthe wooden
slats which fenced in the porch. Except where he sat which
opened directly to the liquid quicksand ofwhat was called
Pacific Ocean. The motor picked up speed next door.
"Mommy''came drifting out from the house, soft and
liquid as the sea. Women real7y are that, he thought. Even
the young, and he would hate, he thought, to anger any one
of them. That was why he was such a sibilant around them.
Not really bothering them, but always on the lookout for
what pleased them. Rather than himself which he reduced
to a kind of helpmate around them. Help me God, he
thought, to be a man and keep this woman and her brood.
Of course it was her house and she brought the food. And
he just sat in the sun and let the sweat roll down his thighs.
But they were good together at night, she let him know
that. And she was his first woman. And despite other
lovers, she gladly came back to him, courted him and made
him feel at home. Her and her friend Margo up the row.
That was good for him, he thought, rubbing orange stains
offhis belly and spitting his sinus mucous inro the sea,
pulling part of his skin offhis back as he moved too quickly,
stuck as he was somehow to the green chair! The sun made
his eyes squint and the nasal cavities behind them to
discharge their flow down the back of his throat. He liked
the taste. That was one thing he got being by the sea, sinus.
And a gull bounced on the waves before him.
Another thing. Brown with black tail and black beak,
turning to face him as he wrote that down. How a poet
controls the universe, he thought. Had not his master
taught him: He who controls rhythm, controls. There was a
rumble behind him and he half turned but saw nothing so
6t
came back again to his book. And the wind cooled him, as They are tears
the jaz.zboys would say. And the land loved each new in my eyes,
arrival that the wave dumped upon it. And the speedboat Mists that lie along the land
across his ears further out than the cruiser, was a caress. to the west, gray blue specters
Why not? Be a sensualist. Take the pleasures, richness that have no names,
another master had said. but play
an enchanted game with our minds. Childhood stories,
Damn the references to my lords, I must set myself we never heard
up absolute, and as he bent to write it, a black shadow of
as till now.
some winged thing passed over the white paper and the
memory of it made him sit there for a long time rubbing July z4
his running nose.
A Stately Pleasure Dome
luly z3
And so he crept away
A poem for the storyteller injected with heroin
by the sea to hear a concert
There are many here where of the night.
l;il ""* the ran*s of
fabled dead, shadows Dogs barking, song of islands
fall across this paper. Names. Cleopatra of shore
out of sight
lists her beloveds gone underground: incense drifting in other rooms.
Anthony: who is to me
or I to him What to do now
that I should name him courtier to that heavenly he thought
tto*t'or with paradise on my hands, who can I
rrrn bring it to.
life
come to me out of your graves, I will paint
a map of Africa
it is the day and lay naked colors royal blue
the dead shall rise and populate
the skies.
63
6z
 running for the rivers and Dreams reveal
orange Beachandland, orange how much in danger we are,
Tangiers. but across the room in the new blue light
a little girl sits up, her eyes
Leave Ethiopia black but Egypt red. wide open staring at me, and
I know it is your sign.
Vomit on the floor No matter what disease gets caught
then swing to Popsy, a cool bass in my throat.
behind the waves
What boat do I wait for, The waves wash in on the shore and
easy living I find my solace there.
It\ living when you're in love
easy Comfort against the coming
building up the scale of the storm,
like a roof The trial
out ofleaves and grass, taking a breath arranged by our betrayers.
on your reed the
end just right.
And nowhere in sight, OnH
he says
expecting to come down running the most beautiful blue water
any second. in the sink
Myboot vomiting strawberry and green.
from the sky
July z5

July z5
I despair of love
O God of the dawn ever throwing up
birds protect me on the shores,
from the dangers of this world enough ofa raft
as I sit in the dark with the crab for me to ride out upon.
as my ashtray.

64 65
Great Britain Russia kaly America Dreams, just dreams of long ago
t 23 4 56 78g ro tr t2 beams a face that we must know
Summer's gone and life grows cold
is still in dreams youte mine of old.
INA

JOB July z6

is German forJew On the road again. America does not change. Nor do we,
Olson says. We only reveal more of ourselves. Riding in the
Crauman car with all the windows open. How can I rise to the events
of our lives. I am a shrew and nagging bitch as my mother
it could just as well be was. I
am filled with doubt and too passive. I go where I am
told. Anywhere. Take pleasure in doing what I am told.
BERMAN There is no comfort in Nature or God o(cept for the weak.
It is my fellow men that deliver me my life. Otherwise I
theyr 57zr of the Jewish era begins at sunset on wrap up in myself like an evening primrose in the sun.
September zznd Gregorian Calendar Nature is good for analogy. We think we learn lessons from
her but she deserts us at the moment of action. That is why
CalvertCafe Hobart - z-9882 we remain savages. Underneath. And our civilization
remains a jungle. Live it at night and see.

De-pression But traveling on the road to Sausalito, San Francisco

then Big Sur, I see how much the earth still surrounds us.
July z5 Willow Road juts out in my memory. Mission San Rafael
Archangel. Redwood Highway. Where man is going now,
And so he sits at sunset listening to who knows. The earth no longer need be his home. M"yb.
Nora Bayes sing and now this means the end of the old world. And man, on the
it is Caruso, shadows are falling, memories minutest of planets may and can range thru all of space. To
when you were my own. the very frontiers, limits, barriers of outer wodds. Luclcy
Drive. End construction project. With what frightening

66 67
speed we move ahead. This must be necessary: Paradise Locked out of the world, above a blanket of mist
Drive. The children are quieting down now. The witch pierced here and there by notes from a bird,
drives her old Chevrolet, her long black hair blowing out we are above the sea
the window. so high the sun
blinds our eyes and the birds
J,aly z7 rise to us,
wheat whirls in the wind.

Wrapped up in an Indian blanket Read Vachel Lindsay: Tbe Golden Wbales of California
with the mist falling on this paper Willa Cathet A?ril Tuilights
I could see miles out on the Pacific Ocean
but fog blocks up the view.
What can I write about
Willa Cather's book to set my heart afire
rat eaten rain ruined as the wood cut and burning
beside me, found in Stone House in the stone place on my left.
on a mountain in California. Here are no demons, only friends.
Book of the prairies, book of love Does the poem proceed out of pain
poems to SpanishJohnny (what rush when I wrote does the heart have to beat at a super
his name and unnatural speed for the word
to be produced,like the gold
on a silver cup bought in Venice of alchemy,
life is sweet together, birds in the branches, transmuted.
broken lines There are no dreams
writing them under a roof that opens I have not lived except for
to the sky,
Woman of the prairies writing
on stone. Out the windowWest and
Waiting. the set sun.
In the window a kerosene lamp
whose light I write by.

68 6g
To *y left the fire in the stone place There is the woman that sleeps
and 4 people before it, now and rises in the dawn
the woman, her daughter and z men, the note
sit on the stone floor, talking of sun that dances in the air
worship and fire worship, on ten toes.
the cricket Then silence.
in the roofwhere the bats live,
Still shows a lighter blue than the black And shadows on the wall
corners of this room, that look like snakes.
stone house with wooden
doors
on the side of a ridge that rises behind No scheme. Only acts
the house to a hill fragments of the act
that is my life and
that of the fellows around me.

Out theWestWindow

Out the windowWest and My book is before me

the set sun. why dont my fingers move over it
In the window an oil lamp

July z8

July z7
A cricket sings in the morning

There is the fute What to do with the definite article. And

that sings prepositions. How to
in the dead of the night. connect
The word that writes itself without them. I want language to be taut
only in the dark as the rope

7o 7t
 that hold a teapot over nights'sleep. It is an hour's climb from the road, so all
the fire supplies have to be brought in on one's back. There is a
for hot water. large stone fireplace to the right of the doorway which
We pour it. Into the strainer opens West. To the East the kitchen and backdoor. All
thru sweet leaves doors are wood. A11 else is stone. Finely built and of careful
craftsmanship. Except of course cabinets and table and
stools, which are handmade from the woods which slope
"The living spirit grows and even outgrows its earlier forms offfrom this ridge on three sides.
of expression; it freely chooses the men in whom it lives
and who proclaim it. This living spirit is eternally renewed I have trouble with Mass Media
and pursues its goal in manifold and inconceivable ways
throughout the history of mankind. Measured against it,
the names and forms which men have given it mean little July zB
enough; they are only the changing leaves and blossoms on
the stem of the eternal tree."Jung, Modern Man in Search of
a Soul, p. 244 The sea rolls in the slcy. Why
at rwilight do I
have to write
This is a stone house built on a ridge in the Big Sur all the world dropping offthe West
mountains of Southern California. If it were not for the
mist which has suirounded us since we arrived, blocking
out the sun but not its glare, we could see miles out on the July z9
Pacific Ocean. There is a garden built on ridges behind the
house. The animals have eaten all the plants. I found two Even my piss runs golden
sunflowers at the edge of an abyss, one ofwhich I propped in this time of plenty
up with pink scarf and stick. They face southwest, giant all spring long one lovely
servants to the sun. We stay in doors all. day, the mist being flowering of my life, and
a bright gray glare that is like a wall around and below us. now in summer I come to
The house was built in r9r9 by a man named Lapler.It is this mountain, this morning
in good condition except for the roof which has been used while below the mist rages. I range
over the years for firewood. We live primitive on a stone here clear in the secrets of
foor, mattresses over wood slabs which give an excellent my own being.

72 73
Let the peaks be blocked from view to score. And the bats return home to the roof of Stone
the woman walks thru the room and House to sleep. And I was born then. And poets go to sleep
brother and sister sit together on the step then. Into a new birth. And we are lucky when we dream.
ofthis stone house. Practicing containment. To adhere to the
structures of my being. Itrhethr thqtfall away into the sea or not.
Lizard under the stone,
bees buzz around us Is I comin or is I goin
in the morning is it somethin or is it nothin
the two trees fulI of canaries atd is I livin or is I dyin
in the burnt grass is
yellow poppies. all I want to know
is is
the air is alive with sound

"...the demonic horses

July 3o
xr.r565 the license number on the car aside us as we go the
shoreroad back from Gorda thru the Big Sur mountains to
San Francisco.
The Great Beast and his
Book of the Law
Liber al vel Legis. 56 revelations therein made to him,
April 4?, r9o9. A thirty year time lag: E Pound r9z9 editing
Exile brings MEASURE out 1959 with golden marigolds
hanging offits ears and a white bone in my pocket from the
fields telling me the way is of the jungle
magic is tbe science of tbe jungle,lung says and the
mountain cat becomes the spade cat prowling thru Killmore
Street. Between midnight and dawn. Dont discount the
dawn for at 6 au the junkies meet at the Hot Dog Palace
harnessed to the chariot ofour life, the conscious ego being
only the driver. So that there is nothing for it but to resign
onesel{, like Gathe's Egmont,'to hold fast the reins and to
steer the wheels clear, now to the left, now to the right,
here from a stone, there from a precipice."'
Zimmer
The King &the Corpse p. zr
And so be done, be gone with it
into some gentler night where
winds ofennui are not so fierce
and fires from the void so drear.
One must remember that "The speech of birds" is the
language of angelic communication.
-AKc

74 7s
 Aug rst all over the page
without will but a plan
I decide today to strip my walls bare. For despite the labor I a design of the mind
feel it necessary for my neur-creating psyche to see the fresh not constructed
field rather than the souvenirs and fetishes ofsuch a recent out of agony but moving with
past. Even tho that past may be lost because no poems the tides, I was going to say
made note of the events contained therein. And I am a wind.
needy and lonely wanderer clad in red with no memories Wbat does any of tbis do
(what a difficult law to live by) so it is I strip the walls of my but that is the voice of my demon, the corpse
room that I may have the fresh, the neq not the evocative that hangs upon the tree and
image of friends of faces my soul knows from the past, but wails! srnaNGE FRUrr
the old wide plain where man is alone, only the red guilt on
his hands, of his own life, what he has and must use. I was Tltis song raas writtenfor ne
going to say guilt for having stolen fire, or blood running Billie Holiday says under the
down his hands, but these images we recognize. I mean the baby spot light. I aint trying to be brilliant.
red that is his alone containing fire and blood, but more the
gift, the

tongue of flames PLAN FOR MEASURE

tx:'.'"Yselrin'
Old-New r Book of the Earth
City z Chades Olson's Descartes
As Newform : Tom Field's Notes on Form &Beauty
the writing is, when it is New space 4 Ebbe Borregard'sJournal
the man place 5 John Haines A Nice View
will show, this structure of change, Reminiscence 5 Sheri Martineli's
shifting but always revolving stream Z Wm Fleming Night Piece
upon itself. So that the way will decadence 8 David Meltzer Mechankions
widen as the land it moves over, does degenerate 9 John Wieners
dip and valley dope ro Michael McClure Notes
volley home like a cannonball, not hip rr Philip Lamantia City ofWeir
struggle Magnum Opus

76 77
 act t2 Duncan What do I know of the old lore typewriters hang in The Pawnshop Window; words go on.
LSD 13 John Reed's And their instruments with them. Today I am one of them
surrealism Capsule from Another World and I dress in a red robe.
revelation Allen Ginsberg's r,so Mad machine vision
Flesh Collin's Tiicky Lad
Jess Sometimes it is only given to us a few words to speak
Love Allister Crowleyt Liber al vel Legis and a litde time to say them in, in an old form: prose. And
(the woman) AnotherJournal or Photo ofJan what is this new form that breaks thru? Is it pure? What
Poems Ron Loewinsohn shape does it have? Its contour on the page.
Ed Marshall
John Wieners And if man is not engaged in
Mary Fiore creating new form, what does he engage himself in? He
Persky's Cocteau does not die with each day. He says there is no death. For
Prose for Russell him there is no life either. It is the limbo of contemporary
Michael Rumaker's Letters America. Yet even that too moves at its own gracefrrl and
deadly speed-need, ease.
Two Indians fishing on the Bay of San Francisco
And who am I but a lonely
setter upper
Aug 5 ofoutworn creeds and
beliefs, brought into being
We are playrng at little games and I am one of the children. by the needs of my ever-avaricious
Not insanity but how far are we from the time of ten years ever bright-full mind.
ago. And daily we re-enact their rites. Let us not take Where do I dwell
ourselves too seriously. We return to the grave soon enough. but in Hell
And the waves wash over us. What paltry beings we stealing your secrets, o precious
become if we complain that 28 years upon the planet is too reader o not desert me,
much. It appears that we are not needed as a rule any without you I roam
longer after that. Or we would remain. Like the tree does. alone. Shouting my words
Or the sun has these billion years. And so if the day dies into the abyss where the
and we too have to decline with it, we know that we come Fool walks. We go
back tomorrow. Even tho all the pencils break and all the bitten by what

78 79
beautiful bug, butterfly o But today is Friday and I know what's happening
scorpion, you spur on the street. I would think it's a full moon
me on. for the high tides in my soul. The Perseids
shower themselves thru the sky above me.
And if I cannot speak in poetry it is because poetry is Buddha sits in the dust.
reality to me, and not the poetry we read, but find revealed
in the estates ofbeing around us. The poet works to undo
the confusion around him. He should not add to it. Well
It is necessary for the poet the cycle moves and I with it. Wbat a dffirence a day made
to be ignorant of the true mystery and yet to contain it the girl sings on
wrapped around him. Not aware that his slightest fash of
eyelid is enough to set those offaround him into an ecstasy the radio. Oh
of awareness. To be dumb himself A mammoth vegetable, those high mornings
A. Richer says. those nights when the boat
rocked with velvbt tides.

Aul7 Must I pay forever

for those sweet rides
Nothing today but the yen. For heroin. Snap my fingers. It thru the tunnel oflove.
does not appear. at the door. I am alone. As always. As all
men. With a magnificent obsession.
Le Chiteau Merveil
I have hunted, I have yearned
for you and now you where I undergo the trials
withhold yr. hands from me.
of desire
I have to look for something to do. What strange voices, what
Now is not enough. There is no use hideous forms appear
thinking about it. Put it away before me in the faces
as one would do a lover. of my countrymen, my friends.

8o 8r
 They stalk me down. To guard against Pax
John of the Wood.
To try my soul? Sword in his hand, rocks
I pay for every inch oflife (oy) in his head, beware
I move thru, maiden if you want to
swept over by it live chaste and mild.
forgetting it is not eternal. He will drive you wild.
That is the nature ofjoy And your bed of crimson
that one thin&s it will go on forever. joy, destroY.

Pain is harder to bear. One forgets there too

that this will end. Always looking for life or the passing of
No it sis not harder to bear. events to be enough. And they are not. We must see them
as temporal. As passing manifestations thru the cosmos.
The non life the vacuum Even this, these words shall fade and'fall
that is the thing I flee from. to shreds as the rest.
The most. But I erect them for they are my salvation.
The eternal letters
And where the solace is. In this that spring from the mouths of men.
the writing. Written to hold up the trembling structure.

In the center of the chamber King Arthur sat

upon a seat of green rushes over which was spread a
covering of f.ame-colored satin. And a cushion of red Dame Ragnell:
satin was under his elbow.
Sir, now shalt thou know what
women desire most of high and low There is one thing in
Rot What Ougltt Not all our fantasy, and that now shall ye know: We desire of
men above all manner of thing, to have the
Every day decay sovereignty.
goes on. The rose grows
a green hardihood. And there they made joy out of mind.

8z 83
 Aug 8
Aug rr

A poem for Susan

My mind keeps running over at its edges
like rays from the sun or
the arms of a
spiral nebula. Just the joy of her
to hear her move in the room,
Oh we are galaxies unto ourselves. And the Tarot Deck
is not enough to tell our fortune.
there is no need to recount actions
description not enough, is like
The earth shaped like a pear is the Adam's apple
adjectives
of the universe
but she breathes
Bobs up and down
like a verb, folding
every 2oo million years. Around the central point
clothes against her belly, brushing
which is bell button
the arms of her coat.
turning point
where action is transmuted. Am I wrong here?
Not a cat
Does it matter
but woman.
that I shake in the wind like a cross atop
Hidden secret from me before
the palm tree out my window.
I watch them unravel their world,
That I do it.
Am the mover
bending before the
and the moved.
beloved objects in them.

Red drapes in the open window

King Solomon and his magic wand
The poem demands a degree of attention that drugs,
because they slacken one, deter one from the poem. At least
I feel not at my maximum po'wers. Although a breadth, a
dimension is given one that is almost, or not, but irresist-
ible. Each action, object takes on a special meaning it did
not have before.

8+
85
 A woman's face.
Both sides of my nature come to the fore with such strength.
The birds, first ones outside
my window. The girl fishing in her purse, opening suit-
cases, and all this at dawn. A magic one I was born at this
hour. And we share again the glow and first excitement of
that movement, again here. Behind dope. The warmth of
mother's womb, with all the hideous knowledge of the
world thrown in our face, get wailing behind it.
Because it is the rush
of
life?
Aug rz
From the moment of our birth, we are placed midpoint of a
sphere shaped like the figure eight. And the objects of the
outside from then on draw us outward, further and further
into space, wider and wider everyday in every way, this is
the upward/motion...?
Action.
All these things are an intrusion and at times called evil
in thru the senses.
because they are of this wodd, what comes
The Forward. Progressive? Progress. Man marches on.
85
But at the very
same moment there is an
identical
motion going on downward. Inward contemplation. Use of
the unconscious. Dreams. Which are made up of the
actions that went on before above. Come back to hunt us,
so that in time they form a
right reason that comes from
heaven, a partaking ofgrace left by our ancestors, but "the
legacy" given to us at the moment of our birth. Each
instant's gift. The result of the action we are engaging
ourselves in, so that if we write, we have the powers of all
who have written before, love the lovers of old. The
murderous thrust, what meaning do these sudden acts of
savagery have? Duncan asks in Lose.That they are what we
are right now. Saints ifwe are saintly but for one second. A
legacy we pass on, transmit to others after us and around
us. Order in oneself. One's own kingdom consists in setting
each instant king. Knowing that that instant, this, is
twofold. Partaking of the pen, and the mind which has
made conscious use of the "pen" since the eye opening etc.
ofbirth. From then to now. But back again from now to
infinity where the first mind shone. We work our way back
to that, on the bones ofour fathers, grave diggers that
we are.
87
 Aug r3
The wind is a guitar in the house tonight
the dog barks just once
at the non-existent moon.
The maiden strums alone in golden light
lovers say goodbye and close
their eyes on the rising sun.
And if one were to begin writing at the command ofwhat
mysterious agent, what concentration could I distill from
the crashing moment, the confusion of thots that rush in
on me, so that my mind can not practice automatic writing.
He, it does not revolve on any one object that long. Lifting
Bellyis a fiction. Is such a conscious construction of high
genius intellect that it does not partake of that mysterious
(again that word force which we call automatic, i.e. without
will, on its own. Impelled by whatever order the mind
imposes, on us now. Which is a creation of that we were
before.
Now does that make sense? I could clarify and rationalize.
Make it clear. Shit. But something forbids it, in fact by
dwelling on it I know I lose some powers of the present,
allowing myself to doubt the authoriry.
And if I were to try again.And stay away from
subject matters. And be abstract. Deal with words as if they
were hunks of letters without meaning. I can no more use
them as dead things divorced from the blood ofour desire
88
and the spirit's rage, than I could see any living thing thus
separated. For all lives. In that it partakes ofexistence.
Whatever that is. I thought then: chance and change. But
you see, akeady I am imposing a conscious order there
which Gertrude had the genius not to do. She did not have
to do it. As I do. You will allow me that reader, yourselves
that. That you better do what you have to do
or you shall
partake ofdeath. Sbe shalt crush thy bead and thou shalt lie in
raaitfor ber heel.
Oh heroine /// The words reveal themselves and place our
actions, reveal our actions by our words.
I will use the distractions of this world, and erect a struc-
ture from them that will be of the poem. No matter how
know I go, how ruined, bombed by shit, they will rise, the
word, in whatever form, but written what? On toilet paper
heart. On sick arms, with no forms
but new ones.
2. A.w.Experiment#r
And if the words come out
with no order or force, love is a shuck,
she does not want to get off
at the end of the line.
Do not anticipate your nerft move. But
89
 move with the passing of past events creation. Semina.
through the window; Wally Berman. Thrown on the wind
of Cassandra's, of
your mind. of Spring,

Bringing them he says, looking

back again and again, remembering how at his own picture. Narcissus, we are
poems under drugs sound so Poor all, us. That boy
on re-reading looking in the mirror.
but so great
when writing them. Of his lake,
ofhis eyes,
let me sing.
I have no obtigation or debt to reality that I need record
it. The guitar can go on. I don't have to try to The new order, the new poem, the new form,
DUPLICATB
its melody, by *y lines, or song, full keeping pace
strains, save that for the birds. with space
not leaping ahead, but
This is the work
of the intellect Dante looking behind too.
the intelligence manifesting itself Wouldnt you. I reveal nothing
thru nature, Lgaz.ziz. here but
the wind is a guitar awave that washes
Am I right on my facts? A ridiculous against the shore
self doubt that has no place in creat-
ion. This is how words are abstract ofthis house,7o7
here in the poem. Become image. Scott Street.
Mean onlywhat they are used for
in the poem. I use that word Stoned.
to mean any high peak point of

9r
9o
 Aug 19 head. There are other things to do I think than write this.
Images fash again. Language gives way or is funneled to
ASP the tongue there to dart out as a viper when the right fly
lands before its eye.
There is so much to watch. Around here. The matador
at sunset Colored paper rose, blue spots, ink spots Boston
the cross in ry49, the sound of cellophane. The sky is brought down.
across the crown the town A black boat scudding in a purple fog. My life with all sails
on top. Rheims Dauphin on horse a-fud, the small town
races to left behind, a new soul on the horizon.
nrr,l (the moon!
4rd Mark it, make it
APOGEE your own.
Leave at once get out at 3 pM. means "Greenwich is the initial Catch up with the colors, be extravagant.
meridian" Spend all that you find
Shimmy the horizon.

Augz4 Sunday
September 5
Across the eye come images from another world. They slide
on and offthe screen. Bits of tree, four fingers, a silver
scissors. They twist and coil with a shape, a life of their Saturday
own. Seaweed. Labor DayWeekend
I
am a spy from another scene, sent here to steal your
secrets. Do not speak them before me. And what do I care
I see two leaves what they say about me
Soon they are three. when itt you I hunger
Who is the woodsman and pant for over the
that cuts down my treei whole face of the world.

The show's over now. The drug has entered our heads and You and the night and the music
there will be peace. Or the black magician rules over my is the song they send to me on the Divasadero.

92 93
And of course I turn to my words when the rest of the world 3)
runs out. Wipe clean the glass.
They flee from me Fresh water. New smoke
that some time did me seek. over the washed face of the white square
Careis what I work for. That no matter what I do Fill itwith a shaking line.
Idoit
with some measure of love and time. Take it easy
Temfo Duncan said over the heads of the qUOTE
audience.
His dedication to Guinevere, the long life with and
The black tree on the wall spreads its ominous form without her, had so filled his being with the magnetisms of
thru my brain. I am in no rush, not looking for the universe love that he was like a demon presence that set the mind
through binoculars, see astray. But he himself was likewise astray, under the spell of
the blonde girl bend the singular passion that possessed him. One might say
over trvo Japanese dolls. that....
Their black hair as straight and short as here.
Their eyes roll and their arms and legs bend.
Le style est l'homtne. For fundamentally, in spite of the chivalric gear
Sir Lancelot, this harrower of the kingdom of death, is a
mythical savior. Instead of the "Two Worlds" of Life and
Section z) Death we have, in his romance, feudal kingdoms and their
Be a thousand weeds quarrels, in the place ofthe dead we have abducted hos-
be ink thrown under the hull, be tages; and as the supreme representative of the soul we have
a black sea. You are the the queen.

rain of forms into white space That supreme and cosmic adventure is precisely
that was nothing, is now the typical one of the Divine Lovers ofAntiquity.The
abstract design, the blue boat black boat goddess Ishtar of the Babylonian mythology descended into
gone. the netherworld, passing through the seven successive
Now a blue circle gates, to rescue Tammuz (Adonis), her deceased lover, from
the eye, that pops in and bounces among the bondage of the hell-queen Ereshkigal. And now it is
the weeds.
95
94
 Lancelot, the disguised rider in the cart, not Gawain, the
unsullied horseman, who is to accomplish the terrible
journey again" Like Christ, the divine adventurer who
descended into Hell and released from eternal death Adam
and Eve and all the patriarchs and prophets, Sir Lancelot is
to harrow and redeem the abyss.
...in the culminating image of the series, "The Dancing
Horn-Aphrodite."The Soulwas the bride of the Lord; in
the figure of the Hermaphrodite the two were one. The
figure is immediately suggestive of the Dancing Shiva;
Shiva unites in himself the female and the male. Such a
bisexual symbol represents the embodiment in a single form
ofall the pairs ofopposites, a transcendence ofthe contrar-
ies of phenomenability; and this incarnate Form of forms is
then conceived of as the One whose dance is the created
world. The candidate is to reahze and impersonate this
attitude as the effective symbol of his supreme metaphysical
reahzatton.
Something similar would seem to be indicated by
the divine bed of Sir Lancelot and the queen: the two lovers
are one, and each is both. In their rea.lization of this
identity they embody and make manifest the singular Form
of forms which is beyond all space and time; their love play
is the dance of that Cosmic Hermaphrodite; and their
reunion in the Castle of Death is symbolic of the renewing
moment that restores the life of the wodds.
Merlin dwells in the "enchanted forest" the "Valley
of No Returrt''which is the hand of Death, the dark aspect
of the world.
96
QUOTE
The magic forest is always fulI of adventures. No one can
enter it without losing his way. But the chosen one, the elect, .
who survives its deadly perils, is reborn and leaves it a changed
man. The forest has always been a place of initiationl for there
the demonic presences, the ancestral spirits, and the forces of
nature reveal themselves. There man meets his greater sel{ his
totem animal. And thither the medicine man conducts the
youths of the tribe in order that they may be born again
through gruesome initiation rites, as warriors and men. The
forest is the antithesis of ltouse and beartb village and field
boundary where the household gods hold sway and where
human laws and customs prevail. It holds the dark forbidden
things-secrets, terrors, which threaten the protected life of
the ordered world of common day. In its terrifying abyss, fuIl
of strange forms and whispering voices, it contains the secret
of the soul's adventure. Somewhere in this monstrous (moun-
tainous) region, this seat of darkness, the casde of Merlin
stands. Its coundess windows look out upon the secrets that
lurk around it, the doors are open to travelers from every
quarter ofthe globe, and paths lead from the casde into the
farthest reaches of the world. The casde is the heart of
darkness; its countless eyes see and know all, and it offers to
each of the elect a different approach to the mystery.
The hero in those days was the maker of his own
'weapons, literally the "forger of his own fortune," and so his
power and prestige were in large measure bound up with his
ability to forget a weapon that would not break in his hand.
97
 The dream of the Age of Stone
to possess a magic missile which should return to the hand
that threw it, like the hammer ofThor, or the thunderbolts
of Zeus and Indra.
"seat peilous" which was to remain free
awaiting secret future happenings
The Round Table companion must array
himself for the lonely quest of the supernatural.
September 6
And so Crystal and the man burstinto the room on Sunday
afternoon about two and started talking about screws. He
opened the bureau drawer and answered her questions. For
the real dope 6end there is nothing to do absolutely but the
ritual of transmuting his dope into his blood and thereby
his brain and then noting whatever lies around him, what
comes into his ken, Darien, on a peak over the Pacific. He
does not look for anything to do, contrary to most people,
whatever he does is enough and right. The habit justifies
anything. For the habit is a means into the heavenly
kingdom. I have not tasted damnation yet. Nor will I. For
once there it is eternal. And I dwell forever in higher
pastures. Beware poet before you go poking about in the
ashes of my life, making ruins out of casdes. Casdes of
marijuana, facades of junk, heroin stairwells, benzedrine
fushes, beware before putting a label on any of my gar-
ments, my kingdom for a horse. My horse for a cart and I
98
ride back to the Middle Ages, pre-Renaissance manEzra.
Pound. I come before the casde.
Monday Labor Day
Now is the only time to write, when
ecstasy is upon me. No more to voice despair. And yet to
voice it. To stop the flow. To be real. To fy to float. To
reign in the throne of Egypt.To regain the right of my
mind. Which benzedrine may have destroyed. Lost. Just
another line link in the unending chain of uaNrt ros.
Simple. To return to
self:ignorance. Be a dandy in a silk shirt but not know it.
Wear black corduroy pants through the rooms of Hell.
Other poets dwell here my God make room for me. Who
wade thru these waters with his hip boots wet.
Wednesday Sept 9
"Woman, what have I do with thee"
To those who cannot divest themselves again of
mental consciousness and definite ideas, mentality and
ideas are death, nails through their hands and feet.
To tell the truth, ideas are the most
dangerous germs mankind has ever been injected with.
99
 The Ideal is always
evil, no matter what ideal it be. No idea
should ever be raised to a governing throne
: that an idea isjust the final concrete or
registered result of living dynamic interchange and
reactions: that no idea is ever perfectly expressed until
its dynamic cause is finished and that to continue to
put into dynamic efiect an already perfected idea
means the nullification of all living activity, the
substitution of mechanism, and all the resultant
horrors of ennui, ecstasy, neurasthenia, and a collaps-
ing psyche.
D.H. Lawrence, Fantasies of the Unconscious
haste, without worldly ambitions, without vexation of spirit.
An inspiration is no more than a seed that must be planted
and nourished.
The canvas I began ro years ago I shall perhaps com-
plete today or tomorrow: It has been ripening under the sun-
light of the years that come and go.... It is a wise artist who
knows when to cry halt in his composition, but it should be
pondered over in his heart and worked out with prayer and
fasting."
The least of a man's original emanation is better than
the best of a borowed thought.
Friday Sept ro

A. Pinkham Ryder No thing but the song

He must paint- After great pain, a formal feeling comes.

He must live to paint, not paint to live. E. Dickinson

Diana on gilded leather

The poet on Pegasus Entering the Realm of the Muses we fall back in shadows.

I proceed in perverseness, be
Winged Horse cause there is nothing else to do
but die. And we are not allowed
"The artist mustb:ucl<7e himselfwith infinite patience. that. Let others fall down be
His ears mustbe deaf to the clamor of insistent friends who fore us. Or bring down the
would quicken his pace. His eyes muSt see naught but the temple of my soul.
vision beyond. He must await the season of fruitage without Igoa-

roo
 lone serving the gods within.
Is not art a sacrifice
and are not we bound
to rt.
Sitting "gods" on solitary thrones.
as
I move with pain. I wake and
wash tears down my face. Who can say
I should not walk in glory
when
I contain my own kingdom.
"The deific principle in nature and
the heroic principle in man"
Move beyond that to what
place but here
where the poet folds his green paper
in the sunset and pads
by in bare feet over the bare boards
of this floor.
Old leaves have got to fall, old forms must die. And if men
must at certain periods fall into death in millions, why, so
must leaves fall every single autumn. And dead leaves make
good mould. And so dead men. Even dead men's souls.
D.H.L.
When you go to sleep at night, you have to say: "Here dies
I do. the man I am and know myself to be." And when you rise
(Here
in the morning you have to say: rises an unknown
quantity'which is still myself."
Without the night consummation we are
trees without roots.
But LovE is really blind.
We really have no will and
no choice in the first place. It is our soul which acts within us,
dayby day unfolding us according to our own nature.

See: Marsde n HartTey: Albert Pinkbam Ryder Because we insist that even the sun depends for its
The Seven Arts v. z May ryr7 heartbeat, its respiration, its pivotal motion, on the beating
hearts of men and beast, on the dynamic of the soul-impulse
in individual creatures.
3o8 W. r5th D.H. Law. Fantasia
The artist should not sacrifice his ideals to a landlord and a
costly studio. A rain-tight roof, frugal living, a box of colors
and God's sunlight through clear windows keep the soul at-
tuned and the body vigorous for one's daily work.
A.P.R.

r03
 Something Eke And in the night lovers come
where there was no light before.
And he'll come up and They bring their animal groans.
into this room expect me They creak the bed and cause
to love him and I suppose the dog to bark. At the moon.
I will, Why not I will endure this solitude.
with yellow flowers in I will rise to a new day.
the holy water fount.
Wait for his foot on the stair. There is a princess in the tower.
And steps like inside the Statue
Cars crash on the boulevard of Liberty lead up to her.
outside this room. It is a holy place Wooden, with grass and sunlight upon them
where I create forms to dance I could climb the stairs or stay
across the ridges ofyour mind. here in the poem

And it does not come.

The long night stretches before you. Monday ervr
O my soul, what will you do?
The Stttf
With no lover. The fates for Chaucer
await you.
And it is time to begin school again
just before Wally stops in to see us
Saturday Night good morgen father
you rise in the east
IfI cannot have stars green and all doors open by you,
in my eyes all the time, you are the news cast, and the
at least let there be love. silver funnel on the Dunce's head,
And night sky between us. Daddy's here, have no fear.
I
I
+
H ORSE

r04 r05
 For Ezra Pound This page is not

The accent of a coming foot

the opening ofa door
docr not a rose shirr-
uPPer a hair shirt
plate and forever the burning
with 5oo peyote buttons on
it. WIT
cH.

Put Doatn of Contemporary Poctry sometimes yes.

Goodmorning the roses sing This page is for lovely a-

In the green garden on lrie
the ranall this is a tape-
stry. Dcstry rides a-
JohnJohn
head. theJoker's
Washington crossing the son
Delaware. Kitchen stole a pill and
pots and pans. away did run
so
f
Tbis ryage isfor Billy a
t
Dont turn away. I want you
in my magic mirror forevcr. a
Desire burns, becomes a rosc w
shirt for you to wear. Hcrc a
I knit it
v
by myown hands.

ro7
ro5
 that no one Rimbaud's Journals FromAbyssima
could catch him Pound Kultur
Guest, B. collect her mss.
eve
r.
Sept zo
kant huite kwip
be lsviet
all of A poemfor trapped things.

You Oh God what have you

Yoa given me that a black
You butter& lives in this room.
This morning with a blue fame burning
this thing wings its way in.
TheWizard of O. Wind shakes the edges of my yellow being.
Gasping for breath.
Alice is one fabulous radio station that plays Living for the next instant.
all night long. Climbing up the black border of the window.
Loud and clear. Why do you urant out.
I sit in pain
She thinks: can he A red robe amid debris.
read me on the beach at Wakiki You bend and climb, oxtending antennae.
like an open book
a loafofbread and thou I know the butterfy is my soul
beside me singing butternut wine gro\ rn weak from batde.

in the wilderness. A giant fan on the back of

a beede.
A caterpillar, chrysalis that seeks
Ma Khiam.I'm home a new home apart from this room.

ro8 ro9
 And will disappear from sight
at the pulling of invisible strings.
Yet so tenuous, so fine
this thing is, I am
sitting on the hard bed, we could
vanish from sight like the puff
off an invisible cigarette.
Fured chest, ragged silk under
wings beating against the glass
no one will open.
The blue diamonds on your back
are too beautiful to do
awaywith.
I watch you
all morning
long.
With my hand over my mouth.
September 17
Iawait the phantom lover-the one who haunts all
vromen, the one I dream of, who stands behind every
man, with a finger and head shfing-"Not him, he is
not the one." forbidding me each time ,o lTrr"i,
Nir,
Full Moon
And new boys come into the room. They sit at the foot of
his bed. They fold up into the lotus position listening to
rain. The night with one far auto call over the unseen hill.
Only the flesh of the beloved is before his eyes. And that
too out of sight. Only strange bones sit before him, reading
comic books and the latest pages of poetry from the
renaissance. High buttoned shoes, high collared shirts,
hoods and white cloaks hang in the closet. The street a
swarm with the rusde of their silk through its gutters.The
stretching of limbs under an Indian Army blanket. The
rubber tires always in our ears. The reunion of the beloved
boys there, hearing them unzip their fies in the night.
October
Tbe Waning of tlte Haroest Moon
No fowers now to wear at
Sunset. Autumn and rain. Dress in
blue. For the descent. Dogs bark at
the gate. Go down daughter, my soul
heavywith the memoryof heaven.
Dogs bark in my ears. My man lost.
My soul ajangle of lost connections.
Who will play in the light at autumn,
when all men are alone.
 Down. And further yet to go. Urania discovered the pole and the dance of the stars of
Words gone from my mouth. heaven
Speechless in the tide. Thalia the lots and good moral teaching of comedy

dromena-the things that are done

For Helen p

Thus the essential elements in the legend of Orpheus Her hair is woven of a million
are sacred song, the other world and the ennobling of man strings, her blouse blows the shade
by song and transcendence, by the mysteries and the divine ofdead grass, you better be there
suffering of their founder. or what I am pulled back to
is the one dead string tied to the
middle of her skull. Who plugged
Phanes in that center. Who weaves the waves?
Protogonia Sea weeds. Priapus of the harbor
Orpheus Ericapaeus from the reeds bound wound a basket
Eros about her bones. Savage moulder
Dionysius from the underground.
Metis

He Will Neoer Come

5o4 Anonymous
I sit and pine for him
Calliope discovered the art of heroic versel To ride by in his bronze car.
Clio the sweet music of the lyre which accompanies the dance Before the Muses, Eros
Euterpe the sonorous voice of the tragic chorus he becomes. Day and night
Melpomene found for mortals the honeytoned barbitos at the threshold ofthis door
Terpsichore gave us the artful flute astride steel armor.
Erato invented cheering hymns to the gods I alone watch him work
Polymnia the joys of the dance up the sidewalk in this sun.

I13
Thomas E. Balas A poem for my goest
New London CountyJail
Bo:< 388 To seethe young flush
Uncasville, Connecticut oflove spread on the faces
of those I love is worth
Take photograph ofhouse at all the pain in my world.
Ellis &Prince on Ellis

4 porticos The door opens.

My eyes do.
At night. Lit. They are there

and real
Sweet music soft and tender light brings in the night'
Sooth- ing stars
ing and slow. shine.

Grid foorbackn.z6 Flesh turned eternal

Annie the Cop born 18 M;ay fi75 translucence.
Like Christ
CalTjader's Black Orcbid come again toJerusalem room.

Sunday afternoon Fires of hell aglow in his bones.

9.26

9.59
A shroud has fallen
over my tlpewriter.
The pencil in my hand September and the harvest moon
becomes lead mywrist aches. falls. The dead of the year.
She is gone underground.

u5
tt4
 So soon. My mother goes. October 15
I mourn already.
Grey hairs across the pillow.

Waitingfor tbe Prince

"a milestone in the history of logic"

No more.
Principia Mathematica
Blue smoke
Russell &Whitehead
up the chimney.
It is towers we build
in the dawn.
Verily I say unto you, except a corn ofwheat fall
And the pain of
into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it
not loving you
bringeth forth much fruit.
With mywhole
John,n: z4 body and soul!
means I go down the drain
with autumn.
"My whole task consists in the explanation of the nature of Linger awhile
the proposition."
Before the guns go off.
LJJ. Wittgenstein
Paradise

Wittgenstein told me how the idea of language as

puts such dry leaves
a picture of reality occurred to him.
in the throat
The way in which the and your neck
parts of the proposition are combined-the structure of the
beloved queen ofthe heavens.
proposition-depicts a possible combination of elements in
reality, a possible state ofaffairs.
It is your light
I wear in the
th"t ?ro?osit;oz serves as a licture
sunset.

Written during First World War in tbe trenches

n7
rr6
 Letters to the Citizens of What newgoddess
out of the tents of Babylon.
What countrywhere the green light blows She
Out through the realm of night steps into her shoes.
Squares crossing circles and avenues of ForWallace.
Down labpinthine glooms.
It's a beautiful cross
I dont want it to be hung up November z7
In the present tense. A crack
On the back of bamboo blinds. PAN
I want to be free
Love in the dawn. And wo giant A*y Lily Joli" Ivy
Steps up the front
ofthis housc. Lowell Lang!ry Adams Anders
United kingdom under
The Fall. Mil&ed Pearl Bailey Tawn
First
Adam and Eve Black Green Red Qreen
Re-
Side in splendor. Here
Yalli-Waddig
There e box There is no p.left.
returned
Received from
what old ladywith golden cyes.
November 29,1959
November r
Johanna berg

South Africa

rr8 II9
 r45oqr95o inverted arrow
Jargon Books
HEAD
40 NYT
50M N
35 Ac o
200 Y T
5oo M

1959
825
zoo B

73 food The Mystery

3 oo drink (forJake
Erlich
tr4 98
r. of shadows, rock coast offMaine
our great ship ofstate beyond beaches, a star offthe
eastern window, banks beyond
JWAH their court ofhigh yellow sunset.
JOSIAH
JOELLS Let peyote go
JOY
The vigil ends. Here
KISSIAH gods disappear. Sinla
MC ARTHUR The Bona Venta sails
BLVD
for me on the grass
wHo like Fifth Avenue. De-
molished. Naked
D
on the ground.

t20
 Plant Jarophagus graves cby
Mercury and chestnuts mat burials stone
to throw down upon the chest. copper (fishhooks
shcll spearheads.
3. Stomp the graves
of my fallen queen. Silver finger rings
copper bands
fi.29
The Qreen draws
an oasis for the dcsert.

Charlcs Cagr"Rule of Kings"

shrine ofthe local god

Study

Origins of Blacfr. Mountain

vlA SUMER

Date of Founding
John Rich to thc ttoarn for dawn

puesi

hegemony
Fara--------

r23
 the offal ofancestors And the too strong grasping of it,
in the hands of a scribe. when it is pressed together and condensed,
Pressure yr. tribe. loses it

This very thing you are

The night of December z5 rysg

Received z5 dollars
How awe, night-rest and neighborhood can rot
on loan fromTiumbull Higgins Family
z5oo N. Street
Washington
DC I pose you your question:

shall you uncover honey / where ma$gots are?

And what is the message? The message is a I hunt among stones

discrete or continuous sequence of measurable events dis-
tributed in time The mechanics of the consecutive order of events
in any repeatable sequence
is the birth of air, is
the birth of water, is
a state between For 7rr
the origin and
the end, between I may be anybody to you
birth and the beginning of but youte still Miss King to me.
another fetid nest On the top, planes fly
dogs, bark at men.
is change, presents Cry in the night, the girl
no more than itself downstairs
sends her mother up to get me.

t24 125
Cuz somethin's on the fire. And JOHN WIENERS
it may be me. So
blow
out the blue smoke. Where Wieners was born in Milton, Massachusetts in 1934, and, af-
all sound dies in the night. And boys ter receiving his ne from Boston College, studied at the now
hitch their trousers famed Black Mountain College under Charles Olson and
at the moon. Move Robert Duncan. From 1956 to 1958 Wieners lived in Boston,
through the under brushes. where he edited the literary magazine Measure, and had an
bird heard out loud. important impact on the Boston and Cambridge literary
scenes. After a two-year stay in San Francisco, during which
time he wrote 7o7 Scott Streel, he returned to Boston, and has
In the green shadow of the lamplight absolute reality is all divided his time between Boston and NewYork since.
I am interested in, the light shining on the silver edge of
these keys, the magic formation of the letters in rows upon
the green field of thc paper,looking like the shadowed
corner ofa garden, elaborating on none ofthis, entering
into communion with it, picking up speed as I go further
in, looking out that nothing disturbs me from it, this place,
which cd. be called,
m"Br., but which
is not, is only
hercr7o7
Scott Street, San Francisco

n6